3 Times Someone Thinks of Voldemort
by quaffles
Summary: And 1 time someone thinks of Tom Riddle. ( post-war. multiple pov. i do not own harry potter. )
1. potter

_a series of one shots originally posted on my wattpad (-thestrals) and now on here bc i like reviews (so leave a review thank u)_

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Harry Potter slumps against the wall.

In his little apartment - tinier than the Wizarding World expected - there's barely any furniture. A comfortable brown couch is flush in a cut-out corner of the room, facing a small muggle television he'd wanted. In fact, the apartment ws filled with regular muggle items, because he was renting the small space out in muggle London.

The weak white light flickers above his head, and he's reminded of a harsh green curse and the initial brightness of (what he decided was called Afterlife's Cross Station) death, but not quite death.

He'd seen Dumbledore there, and the strange wrinkly thing crying of agony underneath the chair. Sighing, The Boy Who Lived swings the bottle of Firewhiskey up to his lips, letting its burning taste wash down his mouth and throat. Dumbledore had given him a choice that day: accept his death, or go back to the world of the living. He'd gone back - fooling Voldemort and ultimately defeating him.

There it was again. Voldemort. No matter what, he always thought of him as that - never Tom or Riddle, as he should. He constantly had to remind himself the thing Voldemort had become used to be more alive, more human, before becoming tainted with madness and a burning desire to bring upon his twisted right and wrong.

Harry relieves everything - seeing Tom Riddle rearrange the letters, witnessing Slughorn discuss Horcruxes to Tom Riddle, l shiny and immaculate in his star student disguise he'd worn in his time at Hogwarts. Harry thinks of why didn't anyone see it - how didn't anyone realise this handsome young boy with the sweet words flowing from his mouth as easy as wind rustling leaves did - how anyone had missed out on the darker, inner working of Tom Riddle's mind.

Voldemort, Harry thinks, and his stomach churns, thinking of all the darkness his life has thrown upon him, and he leans against the wall of his dingy London apartment and wishes for something better.


	2. granger

Hermione Granger never drinks.

But today she does, ordering a martini from the 40-something year old bartender, ignoring the voice of the man sitting a few seats down from her, saying, "Ey, ey, ey, pretty girl! Going anywhere tonight?"

The martini arrives, and The Brightest Witch of Her Age quickly curls her fingers around the glass and downs it all in the space of two seconds, ignoring the way it burns down her throat and settles in her stomach with a sort of relieved finality.

She orders another one.

While she waits, Hermione drowns in her thoughts, painfully relieving the memory of thinking Harry was dead - Harry, her best best friend with the strange scar on his forehead. Harry, the small boy with broken glasses looking incredulously at her when she fixed his glasses with a simple spell - and she thinks of Voldemort.

Hermione wants to hide her face from the friends. She admits, whenever she thinks of Harry, her mind does a haunting thing where it kind of strings together thought after thought and idea after idea - landing her with a connection between Harry and Voldemort.

She knows Harry will be saddened by that - the fact that when someone says 'Harry Potter', the next thought will always be somehow related to 'Voldemort'.

Then her mind does the thing, and she dimly thinks of what Voldemort would think about that. Disgust, most likely, being associated with a half-blood, fuming and seething with the anger she can't quite pinpoint the source.

But isn't that the mark? Of one person in the light and their greatest enemy in the dark? To think of one, is to think of the other. Dumbledore knew this, and she knows it, and she can't help but take drink after drink all the while her mind thinks of Voldemort, Voldemort, Voldemort, and she forgets Tom Riddle.


	3. longbottom

Neville Longbottom has a really low tolerance for alcohol.

Both the magic and muggle kind, he must confess, because both make him sick in the stomach and woozy in the brain fairly quickly, and he's done a lot of stupid things while drunk that he doesn't want a repeat of.

Yet he finds himself holding a bottle of wine, quietly listening to the wireless in his parents' hospital room, both of them sound asleep, oblivious to the recent battle and how their son cut off Nagini's head with the sword of Gryffindor.

Nagini, Voldemort's snake. Everytime Neville closed his eyes, he could see Voldemort's face - pearly white like a Hogwarts ghost, but more solid with blood red slits for eyes and two holes that mark the place where his nose should be. It's a thing of nightmares, and Neville can confirm that with the amount of times he's woken up in the dead of the night, panting from some horrible dream (nightmare) where he remembers those blood red eyes staring him down with cold malice that makes his bones rattle.

Neville opens the wine, and after staring at it for a considerable amount of time, he pours it into a glass he found at his grandmother's house and taken to St. Mungo's, and he takes a small sip.

The wine tastes horrible, and he nearly spits it out. He doesn't though, and forces it down his throat, leaving an unpleasant aftertaste.

Voldemort again. Neville wonders what he was like before, and he privately begins to construct an image of what he could've looked like as more human: clean-cut black hair and soft green eyes. Sharp features, of course, and a voice that makes people listen, commanding attention and weaving words as easy as a conductor conducts his orchestra.

Neville wonders what made everything go wrong - how someone could go down a path as dark as Voldemort's, and he finishes his glass of wine, wincing at the taste as thoughts of Voldemort are pushed to the side a bit.


	4. weasley

Ginny Weasley cries.

And cries some more.

She doesn't like to cry, because crying leaves tear tracks on her face and her eyes get puffy and bloodshot, a look she most definitely can't pull off. And she can't even wear makeup to cover the dark circles under her eyes, because her skin itches and scratches and she can't stand it at all.

But in this muggle bar, where she guesses crying is a normal thing to do, she can cry freely, without the curious looks from passerbys and the concerned looks from loved ones. Crying in peace is one of her favorite things, because Ginny Weasley is supposed to be tough and be the shoulder to cry on, not the one needing the shoulder to cry on.

Ginny mops up the tears from her face, and only nods when a sort of good looking guy offers to buy her a drink. She takes the drink, not knowing what it is, and downs it. Ginny drinks a lot, so the alcohol doesn't bother her too much and she can immediately tell it's a scotch.

The guy introduces himself as Tom, and Ginny takes a sharp intake of breath. She's painfully reminded of him, Tom Riddle, and on the day of the final battle, as everyone saw Voldemort smile cruelly and have a speech about his 'victory', Ginny saw Tom, in his black Hogwarts robes and a gentle smile, inviting her to talk about her pains and troubles and hopes and dreams.

The diary had been an actual diary to her. Pages upon pages of her deepest thoughts and shallowest complaints, everything in the space of her first year was laid there, in the old diary that had asorbed it.

She often thinks about it, like now, the Tom of the diary (she decides she'll call him Diary Tom,) wasn't really real, he was just a fragment of memory that said the right things at the right time, practicing the art of lying and earned the trust of the young, naive little redhead with her hair in pigtails.

Unlike others, Ginny could never see Voldemort properly, on Diary Tom. Diary Tom knew who Ginny was, at the second lowest point of her life (the first was now), and he took her secrets to the grave, a grave he should've been the whole time, and Ginny doesn't blame Voldemort for her first year, she blames Diary Tom.

The sort of good looking guy is about to engage her in conversation, but she stands up and thanks him for the drink before hurrying away, trying to leave all thoughts of Tom Riddle at the bar.


End file.
